Cesar Aira: Ghosts

Except for the oldest couple and the youngest, all the others had embarked on their second, that is to say, definitive, marriages. Which is why they had invested in comfortable, pleasant dwellings, where they could settle down and live for years. That was Tello’s style: sensible, child-friendly, family-oriented design. And good business sense, of course.

The little group hanging on his words, those remarried couples with their shared project of happiness, had been infiltrated by two individuals, two naked men covered in fine cement dust. They were listening too, but only as a pretext for bursting continually into fierce, raucous laughter. Or not so much laughter as vehement, theatrically sarcastic howling. Since the others didn’t hear or see them, the conversation continued at its polite and leisurely pace. The naked men shouted louder and louder as if competing with each other. They were dirty like builders, and had the same kind of bodies: rather stocky, solid, with small feet, and rough hands. Their toes were spread widely, like wild men’s toes. They were behaving like badly brought-up children. But they were adults. A builder who happened to be passing by with a bucketful of rubble on the way to the skip stretched out his free hand and, without stopping, grasped the penis of one of the naked men and kept walking. The member stretched out to a length of two yards, then three, five, ten, all the way to the sidewalk. When he let it go, it slapped back into place with a noise whose weird harmonics went on echoing off the unplastered concrete walls and the stairs without marble paving, up and down the empty elevator shafts, like the lowest string of a Japanese harp. The two ghosts laughed more loudly and frenetically than ever. The architect was saying that electricians lie, painters lie, plumbers lie.

Most of the visitors were already leaving when a truck loaded with perforated bricks arrived and backed into what would be the lobby on the ground floor. The architect was impressed to see the delivery being made, given the half holiday. He explained to his audience that it was the final load of perforated bricks for partition walls, then indulged in a subtly cruel quip: if anyone wanted to make a last-minute change to the floor plan, they should speak now or forever hold their peace. Things were becoming irrevocable, but that didn’t worry the owners; in fact, it enriched their sense of well-being. For the builders, however, the delivery came as an unpleasant surprise, since they had no choice but to unload the truck, and their half-day would have to be extended. They lined up quickly, forming a human chain, as they do for unloading bricks. The two ghosts had taken up a new position in the air above a round-faced electric clock hanging from a concrete beam above the place where the elevator doors would go. Both of them were head-down, with their temples touching; one vertical and the other at an angle of fifty degrees, like the hands of a clock at ten to twelve; but that wasn’t the time (it was after one). Tello suggested going upstairs, so as not to get in the way, and to show the late arrivals the games room and the swimming pool, which were the building’s prime attractions. Those who were not going up said good bye. When they got to the top, where it was scorchingly hot, they said what a good idea a swimming pool was. The metal skeleton rearing above them required some explanation: the solarium would be roofed with sliding glass panels, moved by a little electric motor, and a special, separate boiler would send hot water through that tangle of pipes, because of course the pool would be used much more in winter than in summer, when people generally go to the beach. A huge number of glass panes had to be fitted: the whole roof and most of the sides (not the south side, facing the street, because that was where the dressing rooms, the bathrooms and the caretaker’s apartment would be). The laminated glass, with an interlayer of pure crystal, had already been delivered; the packages were waiting in the basement. The fitting of the panes would be one of the last jobs. They went to the edge to look at the view. It wasn’t truly panoramic (after all, they were only at seventh-floor level), but it was fairly sweeping, and took in the impressive rampart of buildings along the Avenida Alberdi, with its crazy racing traffic, a hundred yards away, plus a broad expanse of houses and gardens, and a few scattered high-rise buildings in the distance. And overhead a glorious dome of sky, the cobalt blue of summer midday. Except in the early morning, the sun would be visible from the pool all day long. As they had noticed a number of children watching them, they started talking about the night watchman and his family. News of his drinking had reached them, but it was not a cause for worry: the proximity of the police station, which they could see from where they were, had insured them against theft during the construction of the building, in spite of the watchman’s distractedness and hangovers. Within a few weeks, the family would be gone. They’re Chileans, did you know? Yes, they had thought so. Chileans were different: smaller, more serious, more orderly. And in the architect’s experience they were also respectful, diligent, excellent workers. Naturally Raúl Viñas was in the habit of getting drunk with his Chilean relatives, some of whom had been employed as laborers on the site. Very soon they would all disappear forever, them and the others. They had been living on the site for a year. The owners found all this curiously soothing. Someone had to be living there before they came to live definitively. They could even imagine the happiness of being there, provisionally, balancing on the edge of time. During the first months, while the frame went up, the night watchman’s family had lived on the ground floor in a very flimsy shelter with cardboard walls, then they came up to the top. In a way it was a rather poetic existence, but it must have been terribly cold for them in winter, and now they were roasting. Not that Raúl Viñas cared, of course. And, naturally, they had lied: for a start, they weren’t legal residents; they didn’t have work permits. On the other hand, they were paid practically nothing, although it was a lot for them, because of the exchange rate. Apparently they already had somewhere to live afterward, and in fact they’d been asked to stay a few weeks more, because it wasn’t worth hiring another night watchman for such a short time. “They’re better off than us,” said Mrs De López. At least as far as timing was concerned, they agreed.

Meanwhile, on the third floor, the carpet layer, a short, chubby man, was checking his notes for the last time, room by room, and sometimes taking the measurements again, just to be sure that he hadn’t made a mistake. After reading off the number, he flicked his wrist expertly and the metal tape retracted itself, dancing about briskly, making a sheathing noise. All the measurements were right. All of them, from the first to the last. He could have carpeted the ceilings. Before going down, he leant over the balcony to see if his mini-van, a yellow Mitsubishi, was still where he had parked it. Directly below him the snout of a big truck was sticking out, the truck from which the bricks were being unloaded.

The builders were in such a hurry they had made two chains instead of one. Eight of them were busily at work. Two men in the back of the truck took the perforated bricks three at a time and threw them down to a pair below, who threw them in turn to two more builders, who threw them on to the last pair, who piled them up against a wall. Each flight of the bricks through the air was the same as the previous flights, down to the way they separated slightly and were clapped back together in the hands of the catcher, making a sound like castanets. People with time on their hands are often fascinated by the sight of this operation and spend hours watching from the opposite sidewalk. In this case the only spectator was a fat little four-or five-year old boy with blond hair, who had walked in beside the truck. After watching the synchronized movements for a few minutes, he approached Raúl Viñas, who was juggling bricks in one of the chains, and asked him: Aren’t the kids here, Mister? Viñas, who was in a particularly bad mood because lunch had been delayed, didn’t even look at him. It seemed he wouldn’t answer, but then he did, with a monosyllable, through the smoke of his cigarette (he was managing to smoke while catching and throwing bricks, three by three): No. The kid insisted: Are they upstairs? Another silence, bricks going and coming, and the boy: Huh? Finally Viñas said: José María, why don’t you fuck off home? The builders burst out laughing. Offended, José María stepped aside and stood there watching, quite calmly. Offended, but pleased that his name had been pronounced. Besides, he really was interested in Operation Bricks. He was in no hurry, because lunch was late at his place, and anyway, he always waited until his grandmother, a little old lady with a powerful voice, whose shouts had made his name known throughout the neighborhood, came to fetch him (she lived around the corner). But then he saw one of the naked individuals, white with cement dust, at the back of the building, and went tearing out the way he had come in. The fat guy from Santiago del Estero on the back of the truck, dripping sweat as he heaved the bricks, remarked: How strange. Which made the others laugh again, partly because of his accent and partly just to prolong the fun. They laughed mechanically, without losing concentration, which was all that mattered until the job was done.